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I drove down to the track early Thursday morning and set up the pit. My crack team of Munroe Motors master technician Todd Chamberlin, and friend and fellow-racer Bill Brown, arrived after lunch and we got new tires mounted on our 2008 Ducati 848 – on loan once again from our long-suffering friend, Pat Blackburn of Trackside Moto. I was entered in Friday morning’s Monterey Challenge, an exhibition race hosted by Jim Doyle, so we got my trusty 2003 Ducati 999S ready for that race too. The track was opened to foot and bicycle traffic from 2pm for an hour, so we took a nice stroll around, looking at the track surface, sighting bumps and camber changes, as well as admiring the views and shooting a few goofy pictures.

* Checking out the corkscrew – racer Roi Holster, Linda and Bill Brown

* Goofing off on the track walk – Roi, Nick, Bill, unknown scooter rider in back

Well I’m finally getting around to posting my first blog entry for the Laguna Seca AMA Pro Supersport race, coming up this weekend July 23-25th. I blame the Tour de France for being so exciting that I get home at night and watch the day’s stage recorded on the DVR, and then it’s midnight so I hit the hay without hitting the keyboard. Keeping my fingers crossed for Andy Schleck at this point after Contador failed to man-up and wait for him on the Port de Balès.

Anyway, as readers of my previous AMA race shenanigans at Infineon Raceway in May will know, the Ducati 848 I’m racing is borrowed from my friend Pat Blackburn – I picked it back up from him at Thunderhill Raceway at the last AFM round on July 10th/11th. It has been ridden and raced extensively by Pat’s friend Jason Butler amongst others, and it’s a testament to the 848 that it’s running strong and sweet.

* The two race bikes ready and waiting in the back of the Munroe Motors’ workshop

Last Thursday I took both the 848 and my Ducati 999 race bike up to Gerry Piazza in Napa to get the two chassis accurately measured – there are some handling differences between the two bikes and I wanted to see if we could measure them. I could see from the printouts that there some ride height differences, which suggested a coupla changes to try during the practice session on Friday 23rd. Over the next few evenings, Todd and I got stuck in to the bike here at the Munroe workshop…

Firstly we checked the valve clearances… and they were all in spec. I have to believe that’s the first check since the bike was purchased in 2008, and the bike’s been beaten like a rented mule, believe me!

Then we replaced the cam drive belts for prudence’s sake, and threw in some new spark plugs and a fresh airfilter for good measure.

Finally we fitted up the stock wheels and suspension, as Pro Supersport is a stock class and Pat has some fancy aftermarket parts on the bike – and with our own bodywork mounted, the 848 was ready to go.

I’m also taking the 999 to Laguna Seca because I’m entered in a run-what-you-brung race on Friday morning called “Jim Doyle’s Monterey Challenge”. For the Monterey Challenge we practice at 8am, qualify at 10:20am and race at 11:50am and that’s the end of it. Then, right after that race, is the 50 minute AMA Supersport practice session, so I hop off the 999 onto the 848 and go right back out. Gonna be tiring, glad I’ve been working on my cardio at the gym.

My master plan of course is to use the Monterey Challenge race to help drop my laptimes in order to kickstart my efforts for Supersport, so we’ll see…

* Picking up Pat’s Ducati 848 at Thunderhill Raceway, July 11th – a(nother) beautiful NorCal day!

My apologies for the slow posting of this last entry – work has a nasty habit of rearing its head and getting in the way of more fun stuff like racing and writing… Nick.

Second Race Day of AMA Infineon “West Coast Moto Jam” Double-header

Sunday dawned bright and clear, and was an altogether different prospect than Saturday. We’d enjoyed an extra hour of sleep, because the morning practice schedule put us on track at 9:30am instead of 8am thank goodness. And when we got to the track and set the pit up, we found that the intense nervousness we’d felt on Saturday was gone – we were now pro-fessional AMA racers, and we had it all under control. I was about to say to Todd that we’d already met all our goals for the weekend, when I realized there was in fact one more to fulfill: bring the bike home in one piece.

The twenty-minute warm-up practice was simply about kickstarting brain and body, and testing the yet-lighter rear spring we’d thrown on the bike the night before. The lighter spring made the whole bike feel more compliant this morning, without making the bike wallow around at all, and I came in mid-session to raise the rear ride height a touch, which complemented the softer spring nicely.

So now we were ready – just 18 laps of safe racing and we would go home feeling like champions.

* Nick leads Supersport rivals, sometime on Saturday – Photo Credit: Brian J Nelson

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Race Day!

I was rudely interrupted at 5:15am by my alarm. A quick bodycheck revealed only minor stiffness and no headache or hangover, which presaged well for the day. After loading the truck with goodies assembled from a quick stop-over visit to Munroe the previous evening, and the requisite flyby a local coffee shop, we arrived just before 7am at the track, which was covered in foggy cloud or cloudy fog. We set-up the pit and got the bike on the tire warmers, leaving on the 18 lap qualifying tires from yesterday, as I was deliberately going to test the new rear suspension spring only and not try to improve my qualifying time. I’ve been around the race track enough to know that you can’t go fast when you don’t feel like it, so you choose those times to try different lines or suspension settings or something, and allow yourself that you will be more in the mood to go fast at another time.

* The principal suspects – Nick, Linda and Todd

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Practice and Qualifying

We were keeping to a relaxed schedule this morning because the show only started around noon, and I needed to change my attitude from mechanic to racer and that meant inner focus and calm. We got to the track around 9am, unpacked all the gear, and went to the official AMA rider and crew chief meeting at 10am. Some of the AMA top brass were on hand to throw out a positive report on how hard everyone were trying to make the series work, and to acknowledge the racers and teams for all their efforts. At one point we were told we were the “stars” and “the future of the sport” – and I was thinking they forgot about the “past of the sport”, oh well.

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Today was a long day. It started at 8am at Kragens – you know where to go – picking up more cans of red paint to finish the bodywork.

While Todd was polishing his handiwork off, I pulled the clutch out and put in a fresher clutch plate pack. On the dry clutch engines this only take 15-20 minutes, but on the wet clutch 848 it took an hour and a half.

I then ran around a bit buying stick-on race numbers and some white paint to paint on the number plates. I went home to get my truck, my riding gear and my tool box, and when I got back, Todd was beaming like a new father and the bike looked good enough to race a national.

We loaded her up, grabbed the boxes of spares, chemicals, tire warmers, extension cords, generator, and other paraphernalia, and I headed out.

I took the bike down to tech, which was pretty straightforward once I got the required Dunlop, AMA and Sunoco decals placed on my belly pan. It was nice to see quite a few friendly faces in the paddock, from back in the day when we were doing the Pro-Thunder series 8-10 years ago. I mentioned I was racing in Supersport to a coupla old pals and I think “dumb-founded” is an accurate description of their faces.

Todd and I walked out to the entrance gate to get our credentials at the AMA registration hut, then back to the pit to get the wheels off and down to the nearby Dunlop trailer to get fitted with the “spec” Dunlop 211GP-A tires everyone in Supersport and Daytona Superbike has to use this year.

Finally we took the forks off and over to Jim at the Catalyst Reaction trailer to install the tricky new Ohlins NIX cartridges that just came in yesterday, meanwhile Todd and I changed the shock spring while we were waiting – not a quick task on this model unfortunately.

Got back to the shop by about 9:30pm, dropped off a coupla unwanted items, picked up my darling Performance Friction brake pads that came in just this afternoon, and got home by 10:15pm exhausted and ready for a bath and bed after writing the race-log – can’t skip the log!

A proud dad – Todd and the 848 now ready to race

View of the plush Munroe Motors pit area, front forks away getting gussied up

Starting to get excited about the weekend. Had to “calm myself down” a couple of times to stay focused on the job at hand. More goodies were showing up – the new CRC bodywork, a coupla items for my 999, and a new 30mm NIX fork cartridge kit from Ohlins. I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon creating and sending out the Munroe newsletter about the upcoming weekend, and got some quick responses from friends wishing me luck. After work, Todd and I got stuck into mounting up the new bodywork, and then painting it with rattle cans from Kragens in their “Super Red II” color.

We unfortunately ran out of paint prematurely, so we’re going to have to finish the painting at 8am tomorrow morning when Kragens opens. We left about 10pm again, coughing and hacking from the acetone and paint fumes, even though we were wearing respirators.

Todd musing on how he got talked into this stupidity